According to the invention, by Italico-cheese is understood a butter cheese which is made in Italy from cow's milk. It is a quickly ripening soft cheese with a limited shelf-life.
Italico-cheese is particularly appreciated on account of its mild pure flavour, which does not resemble that of the so-called Limburg cheese and is not sourish either, but rather fatty-melting with a spicy note, and because of its consistency. When sliced, Italico-cheese shows a silky lustre, and on the inside it is elastical and soft, does not swell on the cutting surface and is yellow like butter.
Up to now no attempts have become known to develop seasoning mixtures for flavouring foodstuffs with a flavour resembling that of well-tasting Italico-cheese.
It has been tried to trace individual components typical for the Italico-cheese flavour. The occurrence of free monocarboxylic acids in Italic-cheese is known e.g. from work by F. Albonico, G. Kaderavek and G. Volentario in Riv. d. Latte 20, 1 (1964). In Industrie Agrarie, 2, 42 (1971) P. Spettoli has reported on the occurrence of amines in Italico-cheese.
It has appeared, however, that it is not possible to impart an Italico-like flavour to foodstuffs by merely incorporating therein carboxylic acids and amines.
It has now surprisingly been found that the typical Italico-cheese flavour is essentially obtained by the addition of 2-phenyl ethanol to young cheese, e.g. young Cheddar.
It was further found that the typical Italico-cheese flavour is supported by the presence of methyl-1-butanols, by which according to the present invention should be understood 2-methyl-1-butanol, 3-methyl-1-butanol and a mixture of these two compounds. Other taste-activating flavour components can additionally be incorporated into the foodstuffs, but only in such amounts that they cannot dominate the taste. Thus it was found that the Italico-cheese flavour of a foodstuff can be rounded off by the additional incorporation of flavour additives known for cheese, such as fatty acids, further alcohols and amines.
Up to now, phenyl ethanol and methyl-1-butanols have remained unknown in connection with Italico-cheese. Indeed, their occurrence in other cheese flavours, viz. in blue cheese flavour, has been established, cf. E. A. Day and D. F. Anderson in J. of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Vol. 13, No. 1, Jan/Feb. 1965. The fact that these components occur besides a large number and amount of other taste-determining flavour components makes it clear that they are not determining for the taste in this case, that is to say that for the blue cheese flavour their presence is only of minor importance.